Dear Sonos, please help me to love my Era 300s, or help me understand why I must hate them.

Why would you possibly think someone in the user community could help come up with a solution to a technical barrier that the actual engineers who design this stuff haven’t already thought of?  It would appear by this question that you are just setting Sonos support staff up for an endless “What about this?   Or what about this?” type of interrogation, and if I were them, I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.

So how about this . . . I’ll explain the technical, but only if you refrain from trying to solve that technical impasse and just accept that it is true?  Deal?

Well, when I called Sonos to ask how to get Dolby Atmos on my Arc ultra from my AppleTV and my projector that doesn’t have an EARC port they told me that the official word from Sonos is that it’s impossible, but they suggested that I reach out to the community to look for solutions that users have found, and indeed I did find a solution that is working great.

So at least the Sonos technical support team is willing to entertain the idea that there may be solutions their engineers haven’t thought of yet.

Happy to hear your technical explanation if you’re willing to share.

Cheers,

Pinkysbrains

Big difference between workarounds that do not require a software/hardware change by Sonos engineers, and something which is built into the system.  

The technical explanation (which is given by many in countless other threads) is the following:

In order to achieve the low latency needed to sync audio with video, when adding surrounds/subs, the radios are reconfigured to a private, one-way, dedicated 5 GHz connection from the soundbar to the surrounds/subs.  This requires a series of handshakes to get right, which is why adding surrounds takes a bit of time.  The reverse happens when the surrounds are removed.  So therefore, an “easily” done toggle between the two is not possible.  They could place a hot button that does the add surrounds/remove surrounds at the touch of the button, but that is not going to speed up the actual process, and doesn’t save much from the system menu commands we have today.  

I thoroughly enjoy the music listening experience of my stereo-paired Era 300’s. Whilst they may not match your expectations or desires when configured as surrounds, they are excellent as stereo speakers with all drivers operating. 
 

Perhaps, though, it would be more relevant to suggest that Sonos should market a set of “reduced driver” Eras, intended as dedicated surrounds and configured/priced without the front-facing driver? 

To your point no 3; the Era 300’s are speakers that can be used as surrounds, but also as Atmos speakers when not used as surrounds. When used as the former they would overpower the fronts, when used as the latter  using the center is fine.

The Era 300’s when bonded to the Arc Ultra as surrounds have the following option:

• In the room with the Arc Ultra go to > Surround Audio > Music Playback > Full

The above setting will allow the Era 300’s to play in full stereo mode along with the Arc Ultra. They will auto switch to surround mode for movies.

If you are wanting the Era 300’s to play as stand-alone Stereo speakers you’ll have to:

• Remove then from the Arc Ultra
• Set them up as a stereo pair 
• Possibly move them to front of the room unless you want to listen to music coming from behind you
• You’ll have to reverse the process to get them back as surrounds

As far as your request for multiple configurations (and the like) they have been made before and listed as a feature request in the community.  I have no comment on that front.

Thank you all for your replies. I should clarify a few points that were poorly written in my first post.

Firstly, I’m not just trying to rant at Sonos, or their engineers who I’m sure are excellent and hard-working. I’m genuinely looking for/asking Sonos to implement a solution that would allow me to use my era300s at their full potential.

Secondly, when I said my wife and I were sad about the music listening experience, I was only referring to the speakers in the surround setup, not as a stereo pair. I totally agree with you ​@nik9669a the sound is fantastic as a stereo pair, especially when I add the sub in a 2.1 set up.

My frustration is with the cumbersome process of switching between the two configurations. Thank you ​@jgatie for pointing out the sequence of handshakes needed to configure the low latency surround setup. It helps me better understand why the process can’t be instantaneous. That said I went through the process today to quantify its complexity (from a UX perspective). To go from surround sound to a 2.1 setup with Trueplay there are 26 steps and it took me 6 minutes trying to be efficient. Only 1 minute 28 seconds of that time was the Sonos system doing handshakes and configurations (mostly on moving the sub). The rest was on clicking through the steps in the app, removing the phone from its case, and walking around the room for the Trueplay.

To switch from the 2.1 to the surround configuration it took 41 steps and also took 6 minutes, of which 2 minutes 58 seconds of handshakes… from the Sonos system, mostly on the sub again (wondering if it’s because it’s an older gen 3 sub).

TLDR it takes 67 steps and 12 minutes to go from one configuration to the other and back again.

So even accounting for all the handshakes and configurations needed, it should be possible to create a toggle switch to automate that process, and it would probably take between 1 and 3 minutes per direction. I would be 100% satisfied with that solution.

​@AjTrek1 thank you for your input. I didn’t know the toggle function was listed as community request. I hope Sonos can confirm this is something they are working on.

Unfortunately setting the music playback to full still doesn’t activate the main drivers on the era 300s and the sound is still considerably inferior to the experience with a 2.1 stereo pair.

Knowing that it’s listed as a community request, I’m hopeful that Sonos will deliver some form of solution soon, but I would love to see Sonos confirm they are working on this.

As it stands, it’s like buying a Swiss Army knife with a great knife and a brilliant corkscrew, only to discover that to go from cutting cheese to opening a bottle of wine, I need to 1st extract the screwdriver tool and use it to disassemble the knife and reassemble it as a corkscrew, and being told that if that is too cumbersome I should just buy a second knife and leave one configured as a knife and the other configured as a corkscrew.🙃

You might be satisfied, the vast majority of people who ask for this feature want a “quick toggle” or a “seamless switch”, neither of which would would be acceptable if it took 1.5 to 3 minutes.  Plus I already stated they could possibly make a macro or hot button switch, and I have been suggesting it for years.  Sonos hasn’t (and neither have the 3rd party apps that do Sonos forbidden things like stereo pairing unlike models or adding separate fronts ← This is an important point!! ).  Make of that what you will. 

Also, don’t expect Sonos to confirm something is being worked on.  They very, very seldom comment on things like that, and it’s only in response to an existing bug, not future enhancements.

If there are 41 or 67 steps involved, that’s a lot of handshaking to confirm the previous step has completed before embarking on the next in an automated process. Furthermore, if the routine fails at some point in the process, what can the “recovery” process be, to retain a “stable” system? 
 

Whilst Sonos has noted this as “a desirable feature”, I’m not expecting it to be delivered. 

Directly related to my points above.  If SonoSequencr or Macronos haven’t done it, it probably cannot be done.  Both of those apps are (in)famous for implementing or automating things Sonos can/won’t do and if it were possible under the current architecture, they’d have done it by now.